Adventure on ice
After successfully taking on the Tasman Sea, Australian adventurers, James Castrission and Justin Jones, are working on another first. Outer Edge talks to one half of the adventure duo, Cas, to find out how these friends intend to complete an unsupported trek to the South Pole and back again.
On 19 October 100 years ago, Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen and his team of four set off for the South Pole. They took four sleds and 52 dogs with them and arrived at the Pole on 14 December 1911. Although the human team of five remained intact, their pack of dogs had shrunk to a mere 16. The Norwegian beat Captain Robert Scott and his group, who had begun their march south on 1 November 1911. Scott’s party reached the Pole 35 days later on 17 January and began a defeated return journey two days later. By the end of March 1912 he and his party had perished in the unforgiving Antarctic.
Following in the icy footsteps of these legendary explorers, two Australians, James Castrission (Cas), 29, and Justin Jones (Jonesy), 28, plan to become the first to walk unassisted to the South Pole from the edge of the Antarctic and back. Their trip will mark the 100th anniversary of Scott and Amundsen’s race and the pair will be raising money for the You Can campaign, which supports young Australians living with cancer.
The friends are no strangers to adventure. In 2007/2008 they made a name for themselves by becoming the first to paddle from Australia to New Zealand in an unsupported mission that saw them cover 3318km in 62 days. They were originally supposed to cover less distance – 2200km – in less time, but their craft got stuck in a giant whirlpool, which tacked an extra 1000 kilometres and about 15 days onto the journey.
It didn’t take long from stumbling off the kayak and onto the shores of New Zealand before the boys began planning another first. This time to take on the ice.
“The idea to journey to the South Pole unassisted popped up on the Tasman,” says Cas. “Antarctica is a place that Jonesy and I have always dreamt of going. We’ve been inspired by the stories of Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen. The challenge we’ve set ourselves is one of the jewels of polar travel – some really strong teams have tried to do this and have pulled up at the pole, but haven’t made it back. So, we’re psyched to go down there and give this thing a real good shot.”
Unlike the expeditions of old, there will be no dogs in Cas and Jonesy’s party. The pair will haul everything they need for Antarctic survival and at the beginning of the trek they’ll be dragging sleds weighing 160 kilograms each. They will also be battling unfathomable cold – the temperature will hover at about minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Even in the era of modern adventure, the White Continent is not to be underestimated. The South Pole is a barren and harsh environment and has one of the coldest climates on earth. Yet, its isolation and the purity of the landscape has captured the imaginations of outdoor enthusiasts, explorers and armchair adventurers for decades. Spending an estimated three months in its freezing clutches will be unbelievably physically and mentally taxing. There is a huge amount of preparation that must be done to ready the body, the mind and to ensure that the gear – and the boys – can cope in such an extreme environment.
“These trips are 95 per cent planning and 5 per cent execution,” says Cas. “You spend so many years preparing and thinking about everything as meticulously as possible and then you’re only out there for a few months. Success is really derived from being prepared before you actually go out there.”
The boys are relying on the expertise of teams who have experienced the South Pole firsthand.
“We’ve been in a fortunate enough position to be working with each of the teams who have attempted the unsupported return journey and they’ve been absolutely invaluable,” says Cas. “Having them as part of our team has been a huge help in putting together a strategy – by learning the best from each one of those expeditions we have come up with something that we think will get us to the South Pole and back.”
The critical downfalls of the aborted missions were typically weight and time.
“One thing we’ve learnt from all of the expeditions is to get as light as possible with the provisions and gear that we’re taking. We’re expecting the trip to take three months and at the start of the journey we’ll be pulling 160-kilogram sleds, which can be absolutely brutal on the body. Any gram or kilogram that we can shave off will allow us to travel faster at the beginning and will make a big difference to the success of the journey,” says Cas.
Unlike any of the man-hauling teams that have gone into Antarctica, Cas and Jonesy will begin their trek earlier, to give them more time on the ice in the continent’s summer, when the sun hovers continuously above the horizon.
“Most teams have gone off in early November and a lot of them have run out of time to get back to the coast again, so we’re planning on getting down on 16 October. It will be the earliest that any man-hauling expedition has ever gone into Antarctica,” says Cas.
It will also be the coldest. The boys headed to the Arctic in February for polar training and to prepare for the glacial temperatures that they will experience.
“The first couple of weeks of the expedition will be brutally cold with an average temperature of minus 40 degrees Celsius. We were training on Baffin Island in the Arctic Circle for a month where we had temperatures down to minus 44 degrees Celsius. We experienced what it’s like for your breath to freeze in front of you and your eyelids to freeze shut when you’re asleep and all of that cool stuff. It was important to experience that so that when we go down into Antarctica we’re not hit by that cold for the first time in our lives and we know how our bodies react to it.”
According to Matty McNair, polar guide and owner of the training company Northwinds, who was training the boys in the Arctic Circle, “the rules of polar travel are, you have to eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re dehydrated, you need to put your parka on before you’re cold and take it off before you overheat and you need to stop before you’ve burnt up 80 per cent of your energy. And just remember, if you sweat you die.”
Cas says this warning will be at their front of their minds while they’re in the Antarctic. Sweating profusely in brutally cold temperatures can be extremely dangerous. When you stop perspiring it freezes and can turn the clothes that you are wearing or the sleeping bag that you are nestled in into ice sheets.
Of course, this is one of many dangers the boys will face, including crevasses, and they’ve had to learn plenty of additional skills to get through the three months or more they’ll spend in Antarctica. Since they got serious about this trip, they’ve been building up their strength, bulk and skiing skills.
“When we went on that first ski on Kosciuszko [at the beginning of the year] we couldn’t stand up,” says Cas, of their first practice trip to the snow. To simulate dragging their heavy sleds, Cas and Jonesy have also spent a good chunk of the past year carting tyres behind them.
“It was probably about a year ago when we first started pulling tyres properly. The first time I went about 100 metres and almost threw up. But, we built up to two tyres for 16km so there’s been a huge development in our skills and our fitness levels.”
Words: Virginia Millen
This is a truncated version. To read the full version, see Outer Edge issue #29
